Second Place
by FrozenFractals
Summary: "You've never been good at dealing with coming second." - Carmilla [Danny x Laura]


You've never been good at dealing with coming second.

When you were five, a girl in your class won a giant candy bar from the teacher for having the best drawing of her family. The competition was down to the both of you, and your classmates near unanimously voted for her. You scowled and seethed for all of ten minutes before the bell rang for lunch, after which you had the bright idea of hiding in the craft cupboard until your teacher left so you could sneak over to the girl's desk and rip up the drawing that cost you that giant Snickers you were craving.

Now though, you hate Snickers. The caramel is too sweet, the peanuts are dry and bland, and the guilt that gnaws in your stomach every time you unwrap one forces you to swallow the damn thing around a lump in your throat that never seems to abate, no matter how many years it's been since that girl's watery eyes looked at you with a resigned, yet knowing gaze as you waltzed back into the classroom after lunch to see her cradling the torn pieces of her pride in her tiny hands.

But Laura loves Snickers, so you buy them anyway, convinced that the cashier can see the regret for a decades-old mistake etched in the small frown lines on your face as you hand over a few crumpled dollar bills.

* * *

><p>When you were twelve, you shot up to almost six feet tall over summer. Your Dad thought it was the greatest thing in the world, and on the last day before school, dragged you out to the driveway and made you shoot hoops with him for an hour. You pretended to grumble the whole time – as teenagers do – but the glint in your father's eye when he handed you a soda from his secret bar fridge in the garage told you that he knew you enjoyed the hell out of being tall enough to reach the netting of his old beaten up basketball hoop.<p>

The kids at school had a very different reaction to your growth spurt. In the space of twenty-four hours, your posture sunk at least five inches as you tried to understand how your height could be such a magnet for vitriol from the people in your class. You slunk through the first week, desperate for Friday afternoon, where you could try out for the basketball team, like you promised your Dad you would. He told you that you'd make a better Point Guard than him one day, and as you eyed the dusty shelf of barely glittering trophies above the framed photo of the Silas varsity basketball team inside the garage, he patted your back and left you to process what kind of torch he'd just passed to you.

You didn't make Point Guard. Even at five-eleven, you still stood in the shadow of an eighth-grader who played like she'd been born with a basketball in her hands. Afterwards, with battered knees and a split lip, you stood under lukewarm water and let first place leak from your eyes and swirl into the drain beneath your feet.

But Laura…Laura thinks your height is the greatest thing in the world. She giggles when people call you 'amazon', and she makes you rearrange the posters in her dorm on a monthly basis. You catch yourself grinning like a fool every time she tugs at the neck of your sweater to pull you down for a kiss, and your heart skips too many beats when she squeals as you pick her up and spin around gently.

You put her down when she gets dizzy, and she smiles up at you and shyly admits that you make her feel like she's flying. The blush on her cheeks makes you swoon, because you know she's not talking about the impromptu swing carousel.

* * *

><p>At seventeen, you were slogging away at scholarship applications for colleges across the country. Three-thousand word essays were becoming a staple of your Saturday nights, and the number of AP classes you were taking made your schedule look like something out of a freshman's worst nightmare. But you were determined to win a full ride somewhere, even if you had to give up any semblance of a social life for it.<p>

You barely remember the interview with the Dean of the Literature Department at Silas. Your palms were sweaty, and you'd had to wipe them on the rough fabric of the uncomfortable suit skirt you'd bought just for this day. Your voice sounded tinny in your own ears, and you think you might have put too much peanut butter on your toast this morning (did you even eat breakfast?) because your tongue felt like it was sticking to the roof of your mouth with every word.

Then it was over, and you're pretty sure you held your breath until you stepped out into the crisp spring air, after which you took heaving gulps until your head stopped spinning.

Your Dad walked in with a single letter bearing the Silas crest two weeks later. You made him open it and read it – despite his protests – and his face faltered for only a second before he whooped and clapped a hand against your shoulder, pre-emptively proclaiming you valedictorian of the Silas University class of 2015. But as you lay in your bed later that night, nursing bruised knuckles and staring at the dent in the wall, you wondered whether partial scholarship recipients were even eligible for valedictorian.

You took the TA position to help pay for the remainder of your degree, and whilst marking freshman essays seriously ate into your weekend (and every grammatical error ate a little more at your soul), now you can't help but wonder if you would have met Laura Hollis without it. And that thought makes you smile, despite the pile of papers with scratchy, near-unreadable handwriting in front of you.

* * *

><p>You turned twenty-one last month. Laura bought you fancy coffee and a box of pastries that probably cost more than your car. You thanked her with a kiss to the top of the head, and let her curl up against you on the couch as she launched into a description of her creepy new roommate.<p>

She almost knocked the coffee out of your hand – and actually did catch you in the ribs with her elbow once or twice – as she made animated gestures to accompany a story about cereal and weird soy milk. You made appropriate noises of agreement between bites, and when she huffed with frustration at your perceived lack of interest, you kissed her, and she cheekily swept her tongue over a stray bit of jam at the corner of your mouth.

You told her that her roommate sounded like a butt. She shoved you, laughing, and you feigned hurt when she called you the same.

* * *

><p>You don't have to feign the hurt today.<p>

You're not angry at Laura. She's good to you. She kisses you when you buy candy bars for her. She calls you amazon with the kind of affection that's absent from the way everyone else says it. She makes every effort to pay attention to your feedback on her essays, even if she still can't spell 'juxtaposition' correctly.

But these days she places a box of Chokoa crunch next to the Snickers bars on the counter by the register. On cold days, a leather jacket that doesn't smell like her replaces your letterman when it needs washing. She sometimes calls you Xena, which – whilst an awesome comparison – you're pretty sure Laura has never watched an episode of in her life.

And when you sit on Laura's bed one night, watching her banter with the mysterious girl who has somehow crept uncomfortably far into your lives, you feel your heart clench, and suddenly you know.

You stand quickly, making an excuse about forgetting to mark papers, and exit the room swiftly, barely remembering to grab your letterman on the way out.

The last thing you see is Laura's slightly hurt expression, and guilt roils in your stomach, far stronger than that caused by any distant memory.

You ignore her texts that night, but it's harder to ignore the voice in your head telling you to stop being so stubborn, and that in Laura's eyes, you always come first.

But you'd rather forfeit than have to suffer another second place.

You've never been good at dealing with that.


End file.
